I really dislike internet sites that require registration before you can view their content.  I’m not talking about fee paying sites.  I’m talking about discussion boards.  Forums, y’know?

I don’t want to have to give a board that I may never again visit my personal information.  I don’t want to set a unique password for them that I then have to remember.  I don’t want to give them my email.  I sure as hell don’t want to see their spam.

It makes perfect sense to mandate registration if a person wants to post to the board, but for simple browsing?  Stupid.

Yesterday, I followed a link from Twitter concerning how to build a proton pack, an article posted to the Ghostbuster Fans board.  Arriving at the link, I found registration was required to read the article.

Of course, I posted to Twitter directing the comment at the Ghostbuster Fans guy (@GBFans).

Instead of responding with a reasonable explanation as to why they require registration, GBFans replied with something less than satisfying.  Since he deleted his response from Twitter, I am quoting below instead of posting the image.  GBFans said:

If you are truely interested in the content, you will register for our site.

Immediately after receiving, I re-tweeted his rather dick-ish remark.

And I followed it up with this one…

Shortly afterward I was pleased to see this…

It’s amusing because GBFans described a goal yesterday:

2000 Followers! I never thought we would see the day when we hit 2000, that really is just a huge amount! What’s next? 3000!? GBFans.com

I just don’t think that’s how you do it.

To be honest, the Ghostbusters Fans site looks like a terrific site.  All kinds of great ‘Buster content to geek on.  I don’t want to register for your site, though.  And I certainly don’t want to have anything to do with a site representative who’s response to surfer’s feedback is essentially “you wanna see it, you will comply.”

GBFans is a jack-hole.  And I’ve got no use for him or his site.